Fantastic Four #60

Featuring: Fantastic Four
Release: December 8, 1966
Cover: March 1967
12 cents
Dazzlingly depicted by: Stan Lee and Jack Kirby
Inking by: Joe Sinnott
Lettering by: Sam Rosen
20 pages

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Fantastic Four #59	Reading order	X-Men #27
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I… never felt… pain.. like this… before..! ..Never knew anything… could hurt… so much… But… can’t let go… can’t knuckle down…! All I got is… my strength..! If I let that fail me… there’s nothin’ left…! Nothin’..! Fight it, Ben… fight it!! Fight… ya ugly , good-fer-nothin’ orange-skinned meathead… fight..! What’s a little bit… of pain… to a big beautiful slob… like you..!

Black Bolt has spoken, and his voice had the power to destroy the Negative Zone surrounding the Great Refuge. And now he along with the Royal Family and Court of the Inhumans venture forth into the wider world. Meanwhile, Dr. Doom continues to wield the cosmic power of the Silver Surfer.

As noted, I’m here for Doom on a surfboard. That’s what this story is about to me. And this is the best image of that yet.

The Human Torch tries to take on Dr. Doom by himself. It won’t go well.

The Silver Surfer remains a prisoner in Castle Doom. He is powerless, but defiant. He believes that the fact that Doom’s power is power usurped will ultimately prove his undoing.

The Black Panther helps out, lending the FF a ship to go face Doom with.

Black Panther has a modified costume. When we met him, he wore a full face mask like Spider-Man. Now he has a half-face mask more like Captain America. His original design had this half-face mask, but the publisher was concerned about the cover of his first appearance making it so obvious that the character had black skin, hurting sales amongst America’s many racists. So they covered up his face. You had to look inside the book to learn this superhero was Black, hopefully after you’d been separated from your 12 cents.

We get round 2 of the FF versus a godlike Dr. Doom. Good use of Thing’s catchphrase. “It’s clobbering time!”

I’ve talked about how I like good fights against godlike beings. And how I like good moments of heroes standing firm against impossible odds. The Thing against Hulk was a good previous example of the latter. The Thing gets another great moment here, refusing to succumb to the pain.

When Galactus menaced the Earth, the Watcher broke his oath to save the world. He is tempted to do so again, but goes to watch something else to avoid the temptation. The Fantastic Four must win the day alone.

The Invisible Girl gets a good action showcase, which is uncommon for her. We see her use her force field powers to hold her own against Dr. Doom.

And then we see cleverness on her part, having Doom crash into a cliff concealed by invisibility.

Some of Sue’s best moments in this series so far.

Of course, we need to pause the battle to see what the Inhumans are up to. Building a campfire, it looks like. We’d already checked in with Silver Surfer, Black Panther, and the Watcher. They’d have felt left out.

It’s Reed that wins the day. He’s built a machine that can’t beat Doom, but can annoy him. Enough that Doom tries to follow it into space to destroy it. But then we see a weird explosion, and the effects of Dr. Doom’s powers disappear. The issue ends with the surfboard returning to the Silver Surfer.

What happened? Reed explains. Galactus had placed a barrier around Earth to prevent Silver Surfer from leaving. With the Surfer’s powers, that barrier impacted Dr. Doom.

But what became of Doom?

I’d probably rate this a little higher if the visuals of the ending were better. They leave it to Reed’s exposition to explain what happened. I think Dr. Doom falling from the sky after hitting this barrier of Galactus would have been a cool visual.

It’s a clever ending, at least. We’ve talked about the question of how writers deal with a villain with almost godlike powers. Here’s one answer to the question. Have the villain run afoul of someone with even more godlike powers. This was how Dormammu was ultimately beaten, with Eternity stepping in.

However, I have a concern. In Fantastic Four #50, Galactus didn’t mention Silver Surfer being trapped on Earth. He said he was taking away the Surfer’s space-time powers. It seemed pretty clear that what was lost was Silver Surfer’s ability to navigate sub-space and travel at faster-than-light speeds, thus practically confining him to within a light year or so of Earth.

That Galactus also placed a barrier around Earth trapping him on this planet is a new revelation. It’s not necessarily an inconsistency, though it seems a bit redundant. Would Galactus have cared if the Silver Surfer went to live on Mars? Apparently, he would. But this isn’t what we learned before.

Fantastic Four Fan Page.

While there is good stuff to come, and I reserve the right to change my mind as I read forward, but to my mind, Fantastic Four #38-60 is the height of the series, and that nearly two year stretch of a dozen stories is about as good a stretch of two years of comics as anybody has ever made. Within Marvel’s 80+ year history, I think the only competition comes from the work of Steve Ditko on Spider-Man and Dr. Strange, which we’ve already gushed over at length.

Rating: ★★★★½, 82/100
Significance: ★★★★☆

The Tales of Asgard stories are short, only 5 pages long, rarely with enough happening to make me consider it for the Best We’ve Read. But I liked the one where they showed us Ragnarok. Unfortunately, I like this comic more. So the Tales of Asgard story drops off the list.

Characters:

• Dr. Doom
• Invisible Girl
• Mr. Fantastic
• Thing
• Wyatt Wingfoot
• Silver Surfer
• Black Panther
• Watcher
• Karnak
• Crystal
• Medusa
• Gorgon
• Triton
• Black Bolt

Story notes:

• Dr. Doom makes rock rise from sea to lift ocean liner as display of power.
• Mr. Fantastic designed a weapon to defeat Doom. Army ordinance is making a full size model out of his miniature prototype.
• Wyatt arrives to reveal Human Torch has gone off to face Doom alone.
• Doom plans to fly to capital of each nation and seize power one by one.
• Human Torch faces Doom alone but his speed is useless; Doom turns cloud into cyclone.
• FF use ship provided by Black Panther to head to Latveria.
• Ionic triangulator locates Doom.
• Black Panther has new costume, shows half face.
• Black Panther suggests ship’s opti-scope. It can magnify a grain of sand upon a distant beach.
• Giant tree crushes FF ship.
• Reed becomes parachute to get Sue to ground.
• Doom smashes Thing between two large boulders. Doom still angry about his injured hand.
• Doom makes his arms more massive, increases his pressure.
• Watcher observes battle from sanctum beneath Blue Area of moon. He wants to help but has broken his oath too many times, and knows it is best not to affect fate.
• Watcher sees a new humanoid race evolving in Sector 34. Watcher will observe them and let the conflict on Earth play out.
• Sue and Reed find Johnny still alive.
• Thing trapped in anti-gravity statis field protected by impenetrable cosmic current.
• Sue’s force field protects Johnny from Doom’s cosmic frost.
• Sue recycles force beam into tightly packed rock-hard spheres.
• Sue used invisibility powers to conceal cliff Doom crashed into.
• Doom can disintegrate any living matter.
• Hunters see Inhumans. Karnak chops down tree with swipe of hand. Crystal creates fire from a gesture.
• Army delivered anti-cosmic flying wing, draining Doom’s cosmic energy. The army and Stark’s munitions complex could built it in time.
• Doom chases wing toward sky and his threat suddenly ends.
• Galactus had left some barrier to prevent Surfer from leaving Earth, a barrier Doom hit.

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